


Day Is A-Breakin'

by bomberqueen17



Series: Home Out In The Wind [5]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Closure, Discussions of Past Trauma, F/M, Fluff, Multi, Party, Resolution, post-epilogue, tying up the last loose ends
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-11
Updated: 2017-12-11
Packaged: 2019-02-13 08:23:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12980037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bomberqueen17/pseuds/bomberqueen17
Summary: Since The Last Jedi is coming out soon, this is a dump of the final loose threads in this series, which is gonna be obsolete. I'm hoping, anyway-- if TLJ is awful, y'all can always come back here and bask in what might have been. But I'm figuring interest will go way down, so I better put this out there now.Featuring Poe's baby holopics, the Force-sensitive tree, and the long-anticipated reunion of Norasol and her remaining kin.





	Day Is A-Breakin'

**Author's Note:**

> _Bright morning stars are risin'_  
>  _Bright morning stars are risin'_  
>  _Bright morning stars are risin'_  
>  _Day is a-breakin' in my soul_  
>  [I can't find the version of this song that I know but I guess Emmylou Harris recorded it and it's called Bright Morning Stars. I don't know how good her version is, I heard Gillian Welch do it and now can't find her version again.]

Norasol set herself up on the front porch of the house so she could watch the road. Of course, even now that she was so old, she couldn’t be idle, so she set up her little loom too, wound the strap around her body to tension it, and set to work. If there was a girl that Poe liked, she’d have to make her a scarf, at least. She’d already woven a belt for the pretty boy Kes had mentioned, but a girl would need a scarf.

Nessa was still working in the kitchen, because Norasol was shamelessly taking advantage of her strong back, but after a while she came out and brought Norasol a drink. “The chatter on the holonet says they’ve finished up at the space station and a delegation is coming down to the planet,” Nessa said.

“Good,” Norasol said.

“There was a still holo of Poe,” Nessa went on. “He has a moustache.”

“Show me,” Norasol said. Nessa laughed, and went back in to fetch a holopad. She came back out, and sure enough, she had a holo of Poe standing next to Kes. Kes was clearly mid-sentence, gesturing impatiently with one hand. Poe was standing next to him, looking tired, and his face was bisected by an enormous moustache.

“That’s a moustache all right,” Norasol said. She peered closer. “He looks very old with it. I bet Kes hates it.”

Nessa giggled. She didn’t really know Poe, Norasol reflected. She’d only been living here a couple of years, and Poe had been long gone by then. She’d maybe met him once.

“Put that away,” Norasol said, “and don’t mention that you saw it. Here’s the game: let’s pretend we love the moustache and think Poe looks very distinguished. This will drive Kes insane.”

“You really think so?” Nessa asked.

“I know so,” Norasol said. “I’ve been driving that boy crazy since before he figured out how peek-a-boo worked, and I won’t stop until long after I’m dead, so trust me, I _know_ so.”

“I think it does look nice,” Nessa said. “Poe has such a strong jaw, it really suits him. I’m not normally partial to moustaches, but if anyone can pull it off, he can.”

“Well,” Norasol said, “that’s a good start, then.”

Two hours later, and she had just made her way through the final repeat of the tricky brocaded pattern in the scarf when Nessa came back out onto the porch, wiping her face with her apron. “They’re coming,” she said.

Norasol looked up as she beat the weft down, and smiled. “About time,” she said, and kept working. Nessa went back inside, and came out again after a moment, with her dirty apron off and her face freshly-washed. Now Norasol could hear the speeder engines too. Sounded like one of the big transports from down at the port. Good, Kes wasn’t just coming back here alone like some kind of crazy shut-in.

She waited to unfasten the loom strap until the vehicles had all rounded the bend and come into the cleared area of the family compound. She still didn’t stand up, taking her time to wind up the shuttle and set it aside neatly so she could resume her work later.

Of all people, Iolo Arana was the first off the transport, and he came over to her right away. “Norasol,” he said. “I’m so sorry I jumped the gun on telling you about Poe.”

“Oh,” she said, standing up to embrace him, “don’t be sorry, child. Only I hope you didn’t get in too much trouble for it.”

She let him go, patting his shoulder, and Poe was climbing down. Oh, that was a lot of moustache in person. “Poe, my dearest,” she said, and startled herself by choking up a little. He looked so different. He looked so old. He was so handsome. He came toward her and she raised her arms, and put a hand each side of his face to look at him. He had looked worn and tired the last time she’d seen him; now he looked… mature, she supposed, and heavy with the knowledge of death but not beaten-down by it. He was old now, older than his grandfather, who she’d loved, had lived to be, older than Kes had been when they’d all lost everyone, older than his mother had lived to be, older than most of them had ever lived to be, except for the lonely survivors. He wasn’t the baby anymore, wasn’t their sole dependent hope, wasn’t a child in any stretch of the imagining. She glanced over his shoulder to see that Kes wasn’t in earshot, and said, “You’re wearing that moustache because Kes hates it.”

He laughed, delighted. “How did you know?”

She embraced him. “I know these things,” she said. “Oh, my child.” And then she couldn’t talk, so she just held onto him for a few moments, keeping her eyes pressed shut so the tears didn’t come. He was so beautiful, and she’d missed him so much, and he held her as tightly as he had when he was a little kid. “My baby,” she whispered, when she could move her mouth again.

He smelled like space, smelled like his mother had at her many homecomings.

“I missed you,” he said.

She opened her eyes and saw that Kes was in earshot now, and pure desire for trouble gave her back her voice. She pulled back, put her hands back on Poe’s face, and said, “I love the moustache, you look so distinguished.”

Poe laughed, and as if on cue, Kes snorted indignantly. “He looks like a failed wannabe gangster from a bad holonovela!”

“You’re just jealous,” Norasol said, “because your moustache never looked that good.”

Kes boggled at her. “Norasol, I can grow a moustache like that in two days. It’s a constant struggle _not_ to grow one. And I don’t, because I would look as awful as he does!”

Norasol patted the side of Poe’s face and let go of him. “He’s jealous,” she told him, and took his arm. “Now, introduce me to your friends.”

The beautiful boy Kes had alluded to was Finn, square of jaw and darkly-radiant of complexion and blinding of smile, as well as undeniably sharp of gaze and quick on the uptake, and Norasol was charmed, charmed beyond telling. She resolved not to give that one a hard time. His soul was as radiant as his face, and he shone from the inside. The girl, now, though, the girl was pretty enough but all rough edges, and Norasol had to ask for her name twice, as an excuse to hold her hands a moment. She was-- oh, no, it was certainly both of them, they were both strong in the Force, and it just figured.

“Rey,” Norasol repeated, feeling how it resonated. She’d expected a smart girl, sure, and a dazzling one, but not like this at all. Rey was raw power in a spare package. “Rey, I can see that I am going to have to spend some time with you.”

“I think I would like that,” Rey said, visibly intrigued. Norasol could feel the threads of her power, all wound together with Finn, and wound around Poe, that explained some of how he had felt to her. It would need more analysis, to be sure.

Norasol smiled at her. “Good,” she said, and made herself let go-- Rey was so warm, and Norasol hadn’t even noticed she was cold, before touching her. “Now, go on inside and let Poe make you at home, I know he knows where everything is.” She pressed her hands together.

“Auntie,” Kes said, and she knew without looking that he had the Missing boy with him. She reached into her pocket and pulled out the little holo viewer she had, and turned towards them.

“Oh,” she said. Even prepared as she was, it was still a lot to see the boy’s face. He looked like Poe, vaguely, sure, but the resemblance was more striking to Kes’s thirty-years-dead cousin Tito, who had died at exactly this boy’s age. She’d already gone through all the old holo files, everything she had left, and narrowed down whose descendant he was most likely to be based entirely on facial similarity. Tito had died without issue-- well, his pregnant wife had died with him, on Alderaan, so-- but Tito’s father Palo had been among the Missing.

“Auntie Norasol,” Kes said, in Basic, “this is Bolt.”

Bolt was twenty-five and nervous. “Palo’s... grandson,” she said, and reached out, handing the holo viewer to Kes so she could take Bolt’s hand in both of hers. Bolt let her take his hand, wide-eyed, solemn. She looked into his face, and looked down at his hand-- pilot’s hands, like Poe’s, with signs of hard living but no calluses from regular work. The thumb was straight at the joint but the tip curved backward distinctively-- his hands were shaped like hers, which explained the ears, then, which were also like hers. She burst into tears. “My mother’s bloodline,” she said. “I don’t know exactly-- my mother’s bloodline.”

Someone put his arm around her shoulders-- Poe, it was Poe, who’d come back out for the reunion. “Yaya,” he said, which he hadn’t called her in decades.

“My mother’s hands,” Norasol said, only remembering to say it in Basic with great difficulty. She looked up at the boy, who clearly understood what she was saying. “You’re my kin. _My_ kin.” Her mother and her aunt had both been among the Missing. They’d all had the same thumbs, there had been family jokes about the Yauta Thumbs, when Norasol’s grandmother had been teaching them to read hands.

“I don’t know anything about my family,” Bolt said. His eyes had filled with tears, and his jaw was set, and he had a completely unexceptional flat Outer Rim Basic accent. “I don’t remember my mother or anything.”

“I don’t have all the answers,” Norasol said, “but I can fill in some of the blanks. Kes, turn that on.”

Kes turned the holo viewer on, and she watched his eyes fill with tears too: it was a still from a holovid Tito had sent to Kes, when Kes was with the Rebellion and Tito had come to Alderaan to help Lita in Kes’s stead. Norasol knew Kes had re-watched that holo enough to memorize it. It was one of the few surviving things they had left. In this frame Tito was smiling, sparkling with mischief as he often had been, clearly about to say something to needle Kes.

“Oh,” Bolt and Poe both said, because the still made it blindingly obvious how closely Tito and Bolt resembled one another.

“He would have been your uncle or your first cousin,” Norasol said. “He died on Alderaan, thirty-some years ago, when it was destroyed.”

“Thirty-two,” a woman’s voice said. “Thirty-two years.”

Norasol looked up, and was not entirely surprised to see that it was Leia Organa. “Oh, good, you’ve come,” she said, and held out her hand. “I suppose Kes can stand to hear your name spoken, now.”

Leia came forward and pressed her cheek to Norasol’s, Alderaanian-style. “Yes,” she said, “Kes is even speaking directly to me now.”

Norasol held Leia by the shoulders, and really looked at her, really truly. She knew that the woman bore no blood relation to Bail, or Breha; she knew the woman’s mother really had been Padmé Naberrie, but she’d never known that woman. She’d never known that Anakin Skywalker either, which she considered a spot of good luck. But she’d known Breha, and Bail. “You know,” she said, as it struck her, “you have a resemblance to your father now-- your real father, who raised you, whose name you still bear. There’s something in your face that recalls him.”

Leia smiled indulgently, but a little sadly, and it was so clearly a Bail expression that it was unmistakable. “That’s impossible,” she said.

“No,” Norasol said. “If you have a strong enough impression of someone’s spirit with you, it can shine through. I can see in your face that he’s still with you.”

Tears started to Leia’s eyes, at that. “Norasol,” she said, and Norasol pulled her in close again, for a real embrace, chest to chest, shoulder to shoulder, Leia’s chin tucked over her shoulder. Leia was so slight, and even as diminished as Norasol was now with age, Leia was still smaller. “You know,” Leia whispered, “I’m older now than he ever was.”

“I’m the oldest any of my people has lived to be in generations,” Norasol told her. “I didn’t think it would be this hard.”

Next to her, Kes had gotten himself mostly under control and was explaining to Bolt who Tito had been. They’d been first cousins, and had been raised together; Tito had been just enough older that Kes had trailed at his heels for most of childhood, idolizing everything he did like children often did with older siblings. Tito’s father had been Missing, and Kes’s had been, well, it was complicated, so they’d banded together against the world. The two of them had remained very close, even when adulthood had sent them their separate ways for seasons at a time. Tito’s death on Alderaan had been lost in all the shuffle, but Norasol knew it had affected Kes almost as deeply as losing his mother in the same catastrophe.

Poe had grown to favor Tito a little in appearance, but Kes had never spoken to him of it, because Norasol knew it still hurt too much to think of Tito. But Bolt resembled him even more strongly, and it was time, now, to tell his story.

From Poe’s fascinated expression, Norasol figured it was more than past time for this story, but it hadn’t been her place to decide.

There were a lot of stories it was more than past time to tell, but Kes wasn’t a man easily moved to speak. Not when he wasn’t well. He went through phases where it was hard to get a whole sentence out of him, and it was good to hear him speaking now; she could see in his soul that he’d had to kill, and sometimes that set him off, but it didn’t seem to have this time. Norasol worried about him, and figured it was the primary driving force keeping her alive nowadays. It’d be nice to have some other motivations for a while.

 

________

 

The old woman had some power, something humming warm and bright in her soul in contrast to her cold frail hands. Rey liked her instantly, though she was wary. She also liked this planet, which felt much like the old woman did-- humming, warm, bright, alive. It was green, green like Takodana, maybe even more so, and it was hot and damp and breathed life in every breeze. There were living things all over, some wild ones and some tame ones, and she’d never seen tamed animals before, not like this-- draftbeasts yes, but not livestock.

“Time was,” Iolo Arana had said, as they’d taken the shuttle down from the space station to the planet, “I was the only person from the Academy ever to have seen the mythical Dameron homestead, and I was sworn to secrecy.”

“You didn’t let me down,” Poe had said, sounding somewhat surprised by the revelation.

“Never breathed a word of it,” Iolo said. “And you don’t know the kind of offers I turned down, Poe. But I never betrayed you.”

Poe had hugged him, and Rey had caught Bolt looking unguardedly at them, his whole face a mess of confusion and jealousy and fascination.

The old woman led them all into a house. There were two houses, set at angles close to one another, and one belonged to Kes, and the other to the old woman. Rey had come to understand that Poe had grown up here, so she was interested to see what a house where a child could grow up would be like. There were no traces of children here now, though, that she could find. She followed the old woman into the comfortable space, looking up in delight-- the entryway had a high ceiling and there were hooks suspended from it, with lines, and there were bundles of herbs drying up by the ceiling, making the whole space smell like food.

Also, there was food, which was a surefire way to please Rey. She had thought maybe she’d get used to food being so abundant and careless, but she wasn’t really yet.

The young woman who seemed to be following the old woman around served drinks to everyone, and Rey wound up with something greenish and cold in a glass with a leaf sprig in it. Rey wasn’t sure if she was meant to eat the leaf. She did anyway, and it was strongly-flavored, so much so that her tongue briefly tingled.

Poe was so different, here-- it was a more intense version of how being around his father brought out personality traits she hadn’t before seen, she supposed. He was lit up in a different way than she’d seen before, bright and laughing and maybe a little embarrassed but also, in some way, completed. This was his context, and he fit here, and he was glad of it.

He was beautiful, regardless, and Finn was visibly enchanted by how beautiful he was, and Rey admired both of them and laughed when the old woman caught her eye knowingly.

“Can we show them Poe’s baby holopics?” the old woman asked Kes, and Kes turned to look at the old woman, then at Rey, and then across the crowded room to Poe, who was providing color commentary to a story Iolo was telling Bolt and Finn and a few hangers-on. Jess Pava was one of the hangers-on, and she looked so different, wearing clothes that weren’t a uniform, her hair carelessly bound up in a messy knot, her face bright with amusement. She noticed Rey looking at her. Rey looked away before she could react.

“ _Can_ we?” Kes said, frowning. “Norasol, I think it’s _required_.” Rey puzzled over Kes’s dour expression for a moment before realizing the he was almost certainly putting it on, and was truly amused by the proceedings. It sparked a suspicion in her mind that perhaps Kes did not really hate Poe’s moustache, and was only giving a reaction to amuse everyone.

Jess Pava was suddenly at Rey’s elbow, leaning in toward Kes. “Captain Dameron, sir,” she said, “did I hear you say the phrase _Poe’s baby holopics_?”

Kes regarded her a moment, inscrutable. “None of that _sir_ bullshit inside my house,” he said.

“Yessir,” Jess said, but her expression twinkled with mischief, and Kes couldn’t keep a straight face either. “I mean, mister.”

“Call me Kes,” he said.

“Call me Jess,” she answered.

“We can rhyme,” Kes said. “Fantastic.”

“Are you two a nightmare team-up now?” Poe asked, having twigged that he was being discussed. He winked at Rey as he approached.

“I’m everyone’s nightmare team-up,” Jess said, but Rey noticed that her smile was a little strained.

Rey moved her arm, wrapping it around Jess’s arm. “I thought you were a pretty good nightmare teamup with me,” she said. “I don’t figure we have to rhyme for that.”

Jess gave her a blank, sort of gobsmacked look. Poe looked surprised too, then a look of calculation crossed his face that Rey couldn’t parse, and then he smiled. “I imagine the two of you would work well together,” he said, “but I’m more afraid of Jess and my father teaming up against me, you understand.”

“Nonsense,” Kes said. “I have only your best interests in mind. And also a lot of holopics of your tiny naked ass because you were a dedicated nudist in your extreme youth, and simultaneously the bane of my existence and my entire reason for being.”

Rey tilted her head at him. “Is that how being a dad works?” she asked.

Kes looked slightly surprised, then thought it over. “Well,” he said, “yes, in fact, that is.”

 

________

 

Poe was finding it weirdly disorienting to be hosting a party at the ranch on Yavin IV. He’d done it a lot as a kid, had spent a lot of time refilling the drink pitchers and hiding in the barn with other kids to shirk responsibility, or hiding around corners to eavesdrop on adult conversations and learn new colorful language and gossip. He’d been to these sorts of parties as an adult as well, but much more rarely.

He did remember sitting with his father and drinking, a time or two, and he was pleased to have a chance to do it again. It was rawer now, more bruised, but also more honest; as a young adult, he’d just pushed aside whatever lingering offense had forever been floating between himself and his father. Now at least they’d more or less had it out, though Poe had some lingering unaddressed hurt over all of it.

The apparently-ritual Showing Of Poe’s Baby Holos To His Coworkers was turning out considerably less-painful than Poe had anticipated, and not just because of how much drink was being taken, and the fact that Poe was sitting close enough that Kes kept leaning his shoulder against Poe’s when he sat back. They were in the sitting room, which was open to the kitchen, which was open to the garden, and so people kept milling in and out, and there were innumerable conversations going on, and a lot of people were only paying enough attention to notice whether there were nude images, Poe suspected.

Kes had a very carefully-curated little display of holopics on the nice holoviewer he had in his house, and made a very pleasant showing of family holos-- starting with the grandmother Poe didn’t remember, in a still image he’d never seen before-- his grandmother looked tired and worn and was sitting next to Queen Breha of Alderaan, holding Poe as a newborn. The two women were, by their body language, clearly friends, and Breha was dressed informally by Alderaanian royal standards, her hair impeccably styled but her ornate robe unstructured and her posture natural.

There were a few more holos of Poe with his mother, who was beautiful, of course; Poe had seen most of these before. Especially of the one that was billed as Poe’s First Flying Lesson, featuring a very tiny Poe cradled in a sling against his mother’s chest as she piloted what appeared to be a pretty standard courier vessel, looking amused and stylish. Poe had used that one a few times in projects; it was his favorite baby photo of himself.

But it wasn’t until the first holo that included Kes appeared that Poe realized these were in order. Poe himself was still very tiny in this photo, and Kes looked like shit, gaunt and exhausted and unshaven, sitting on the floor of an unfamiliar spacecraft or something, with Shara next to him, both of them extremely distracted. Shara was visibly crying, in the holo, though she was smiling too, and Kes wasn’t in much better shape.

“That’s an awful pic of me,” Kes said. “Never say I’m not fair about this.”

“You do look like shit there, Pa,” Poe said.

“Give me some credit,” Kes said, “things were pretty intense just then.” He skipped to the next holopic, which was a much better pic of Kes himself, in a Pathfinder uniform but not so gaunt or exhausted, holding a sleeping tiny Poe against his shoulder. Several people made _awww_ noises, including a few who drifted in from the kitchen for a closer look, and he waved a hand. “I’m getting to the good stuff. Hang on.”

The very next photo, as promised, was of a nude Poe, maybe six months old, partly wrapped in a towel, wet hair standing straight up, in his mother’s arms, reaching for the holocam with a wide toothless grin.

There was general amusement and uproar, and Kes said, “I promised you all nudes. There you go.”

The rest of the show was mostly holos of Poe covered in dirt, posting with his mother, dressed up for recitals, holding his guitar, standing next to various farm equipment looking awkward or amused-- unobjectionable photos really, though oddly light on pics including spacecraft or his Academy uniform, given Poe’s own memories of his upbringing. He might have been embarrassed by some of them when he was younger, especially the ones featuring livestock or farm equipment, but by this point in his life, he could appreciate that everyone had holos like this of themselves, and at least to everyone here, the cat was out of the bag about Poe really being a farm kid.

To Poe’s mild chagrin, the photo of him from the Naval Academy, drunk at a party with his suspenders slipping off his shoulders, was in there. It seemed to be the only one of him in uniform in the entire slideshow. “Why, Papa?” he asked, over the general furor. “Why this one?”

Everyone went quiet when Kes didn’t answer immediately. He wasn’t laughing. Poe had a moment of dread before Kes finally answered.

“Because you look like your mother in it,” he said, “and it was a blessed relief to see you smiling for real in a holo. All the other ones they sent of you didn’t really look like you.”

There was a moment of quiet at that, and Poe said, “Way to get heavy, there, Dad.”

“You asked,” Kes said. “Anyway I didn’t put this collection together for everyone’s amusement, these are the holos _I_ like. I don’t have to answer anyone’s questions if I don’t want to.”

“We wanted embarrassing ones,” Iolo said.

Kes smiled mysteriously. “You didn’t say that,” he said. “I don’t know that I can help you, I don’t think much of Poe’s childhood was intrinsically that embarrassing and I’m not up enough on his current views to know what he’d retroactively be embarrassed by.”

“I mean, this, for example,” Poe said, gesturing at the still-current holo. But he was still hung up on the realization that this wasn’t a slideshow made for the party, these were the holos Kes himself looked at when he wanted to look at holos.

“Nonsense,” Kes said, “it’s insanely flattering.” He shook his head. “I never looked that good in any of the holos of my youthful shenanigans.”

“Respectfully submitted, sir,” Iolo said, “ _are_ there holos of your youthful shenanigans?”

Kes turned to look at him. “How many of you, who incidentally all outrank me, am I going to have to yell at for misuse of honorifics?”

“Respectfully submitted,” Jess Pava put in, “none of us really outranks you, not really.”

“I’ve never seen baby pictures of you, Papa,” Poe said, heading it off at the pass.

Kes let his breath out slowly. “That’s because I was born a refugee, Poe,” he said. “There aren’t many holos from before I joined the Rebellion. And then all the holos make me look like some sort of mute thug, because the documentation people were all racists and seemed to think if they took one when I was smiling or talking it’d break the holocam rig.”

Norasol cackled from the doorway, startling Poe; he hadn’t known she was there. “It’s true!” she said. “By the Mother, it’s true. I never did quite put my finger on what was so funny about that. To be fair to them, though, you basically didn't talk for most of the war.”

“Go through any holodoc about the Rebellion,” Kes said, “and if I’m in it, I guarantee you, I have this look on my face like I’m about to kill someone. And like, through the whole thing, I’d lost my good boxcutter so I had this giant knife, and I swear they’d wait until I got the knife out to do something like, open a package or something, and every photo has me with this fucking knife in my hand like all I did the whole war was run around glowering and stabbing things. It’s fucking obnoxious.”

“I had noticed that,” Iolo said. “In like, the holodocs and stuff, if you were there, you were really scary. It was part of why I was so surprised to meet you.”

Kes rolled his eyes and nodded. “It was, like, an ongoing theme.”

“But I’ll point out that it’s not true that there are no holopics of Kes as a child,” Norasol pointed out, pushing off the doorway. Poe noticed with some delight that she had a chip in her hand, and Kes noticed it at the same time.

“Oh no,” Kes said, expression going dismayed. “I’ve made a grave miscalculation in thinking my auntie wouldn’t do this to me.”

Norasol cackled again, and put the chip into the slot on the holoviewer. The first holo she pulled up was of a tiny dark-eyed child sitting in a mud puddle looking innocently delighted.

“Oh,” Rey said, the first time she’d spoken up, and everyone looked at her. “Oh, he just-- I can see how much he looks like Poe and it’s weird because it’s obviously a different child.”

“Isn’t family resemblance fascinating?” Norasol asked, beaming at her. She paged to the next holo, which was of two children in elaborate formalwear. One was a girl, resplendent in white and gold, hair arrayed in a crown of braids atop her head, hands folded at her breast, looking sidelong and amused at the other, who was wearing a black jacket with small patches of bright-colored embroidery, a colorful sash, black trousers, and a black hat, and staring at the camera blank-faced as if terrified.

“Oh,” Kes said, “who can guess who that girl is?”

Poe knew it was Leia, but he hadn’t seen the image in a long time. She was in Alderaanian court finery, round-cheeked and sweet and maybe five or six. Kes looked too thin and pinched, and his eyes were black holes.

No one ventured a guess, and finally Kes said, “She’s a general now.”

“General… Organa?” Iolo ventured. Kes nodded.

“No!” Pava said, endearingly astonished. Poe laughed, and confirmed it.

“I spent a lot of time on Alderaan as a child,” Kes said. “Appealing to her family for diplomatic recognition of our people’s refugee status. It was a lot of standing around, as I recall, but sometimes you got candy.”

“In this picture you look like someone just died,” Norasol said. “I never knew why you looked like that.”

“I was afraid of the droid taking the holo,” Kes said. “I still remember it. It was a weird protocol droid, a really spindly-looking one with a creepy non-face. I look like that in almost every holo because I was so terrified of that thing.”

“I never knew that,” Norasol said mildly.

“I never told you,” Kes said. “You never asked and I wasn’t a whiner.”

“You weren’t, dear,” Norasol agreed, patting his shoulder. "Now, on the other hand--"

“Now, how old was I when we left Alderaan?” Poe asked. “I know I was born there but I don’t remember it, and I can’t have been very old when it was destroyed.”

Kes stared at him a moment, then glanced over at Norasol. Norasol looked oddly nonplussed as well. “Two months,” Kes said, still looking at Norasol.

“When it was destroyed, or when we left?” Poe asked.

Kes laughed humorlessly. “Both,” he said.

“We left about twelve hours before it was destroyed,” Norasol said. “I had a bad feeling, and your mother wanted to go anyway, and I kicked up a fuss, and we just-- left. But we left everyone behind.”

Poe shut his mouth as he digested that. “I… only sort of knew that,” he said.

“I wasn’t with you,” Kes said. “I was already in the Rebellion.”

Poe digested that. “So you probably… heard about Alderaan before… but you knew we were coming, right?”

Kes shook his head, smiling grimly. “No,” he said.

“Oh sweet Mother,” Pava said, shocked.

“I thought they were all dead for a solid three days,” Kes said. “I lost friends at the Battle of Scarif, and then Alderaan took my whole family I thought-- those were not a good three days, fellows. That’s why I look so shitty in that one holo with Poe. That was me seeing him for the first time ever, having been convinced he’d died before I could ever meet him.”

Poe opened, then closed his mouth again. “I didn’t know that,” he said.

“Holy shit,” Iolo said.

Kes sighed, and paged back to the holo in question, of a gaunt red-eyed Kes sitting on the floor next to a crying Shara. “It sucked,” he said. “So we knew the Death Star was coming for the Yavin base and so we all hopped ourselves up on stimulants to try to load out everything we could and make a run for it with the equipment we could salvage, and I figured I’d drop dead of overwork just before the Death Star showed up and it’d be a good ending, but then you beat the Death Star there so I had to figure out what to do with you, instead.”

“Holy shit,” Iolo said again.

“So, for the record, that’s what that shit does to you,” Kes said. “I didn’t stop shaking for about a week. We spent the entire Battle of Yavin cowering in the shadow of an asteroid field, by the way, and didn’t see a damn bit of it. Not that I would have been able to understand what was going on anyway.”

Poe put his glass down on the side table, turned, and put his arms around his father. “Papa,” he said. He was drunk enough to do this.

“It was great,” Kes said, and put his head down on Poe’s shoulder.

Poe smoothed his hand across his father’s hair, and it was a familiar texture, he’d patted his father’s head a lot as a child probably, but it was a long time now since he’d touched him like this. “Papa,” he said, “I never knew that. I’m sorry.”

“It was clearly not your fault, baby,” Kes said, switching to Iberican, which meant that either he was drunk enough to forget about the other people there, or sober enough to want this matter to be somewhat more private.

“That doesn’t mean I can’t be sorry for you,” Poe said. He knew his family chronology approximately, and he knew that Kes had been much younger than Poe himself was now when all that had happened. Kes was only twentyish years older than Poe. Poe at twenty had been a mess of good intentions bent on writing checks his actual abilities couldn’t cash. He couldn’t imagine how hard it would be now to lose everyone, let alone at that age.

And he’d never had a chance to know what it was like to have a son, let alone lose one, let alone lose and regain one, so. Kes was letting Poe hold him, in front of people, so Poe didn’t let go. “It was my first insight,” Kes said, “into how fucking difficult parenting can be. You’ve taken most of your heart and put it into a separate external container where it’s really easy to get at and break. Sometimes I think I’ve spent your whole life having my heart broken over and over again.”

“And here I thought I got my dramatics from my mother’s side,” Poe said. The others were all discussing the destruction of Alderaan, and not paying attention to the Damerons.

“Oh, no,” Norasol said, proving that it was unwise to discount her attention span. “Kes is a hundred times more dramatic than you’ve ever managed to be, Poe. Shara’s family really had no gift for drama, that’s a Dameron thing all the way down.”

“I dunno,” Kes said, “she could really pour it on when she needed to.”

“I guess it’s unfair to say a Dameron thing,” Norasol corrected herself. “I think you got it from _your_ father, Kes. He was an absolute drama monster.”

“Let’s not pick on the poor man,” Kes said.

“Did he die on Alderaan?” Poe asked, since so much information had been forthcoming thusfar. He knew all about his mother’s father-- who had helped to raise him until he’d died just after Poe left for the Academy-- and almost nothing that he could recollect about his other grandfather.

Kes shook his head. Norasol made an odd noise. After a moment, Kes raised his head and looked at Poe. “I’ve told you all about him,” he said. “He’s the one who died for the Rebellion.”

Poe blinked, trying to recollect it. He had a vague understanding of the family tree, formed over many years of overheard arguments between his father and auntie-- great-aunt, really, Norasol was, though he was hazy on her actual relationship to him, but she’d more or less raised his father, so she was more or less his grandmother, but that actual title was reserved exclusively for Lita, who’d died with Alderaan and occupied no space in Poe’s memory at all firsthand, but secondhand loomed large as an absence that Norasol and Kes both had spent his whole life keeping space for.

There was no such space for a paternal grandfather, or a maternal grandmother. Only Abuelo, also known as Titi, who Poe had known and loved through all of childhood, and had been unprepared to lose as a teenager. Mama’s papa, Titi Sento, a small-framed dark-skinned broad-smiling little man, clever and capable and understanding and quick of tongue, mild in reproach, unfoolable. Gone.

“Molo,” Poe said, coming up with the paternal grandfather’s name on a snap of his fingers. “Molo… something.” It had been brought up recently, surely, but Poe couldn't recall a surname. He knew Dameron had been his grandmother, at least.

“Untar,” Kes said, and looked at Norasol. Norasol looked back, and it was one of those Looks. The two of them had occasionally spoken in code, elaborate metaphors Poe could sometimes puzzle out, but more often, used Significant Looks to have conversations about him, and this was one of them.

“Oh, come on,” Poe said. “I’m not sober enough for you to mentally regress me to childhood like this. What?”

“You said you told him,” Norasol said.

“I _did_ tell him,” Kes said. “Xacristo, I made a big deal out of it, I told the whole story, I even threw in the part where [Cassian Andor made a pass at me.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10921308)”

“Cassian who _what_?” Poe knew fine well who Cassian Andor was. Everyone knew who Cassian fucking Andor was. “I’d remember that, no way!”

“What’s this now?” Leia asked, coming in from another room like a bloodhound for trouble.

“Cassian Andor made a pass at my dad?” Poe said, turning to Leia for backup.

“He fucking _what_ ,” Leia said, stopping short; it was a delightful truth that she swore much more readily in Iberican than Basic. “Kes! When was this?”

“I swear to the holy mother that I told you this story,” Kes said to Poe.

“What are you all talking about?” Finn asked, surfacing from the other conversation.

“We need more drinks,” Iolo said, and busied himself with the pitcher, adding to everyone’s glasses. Kes sighed grimly, surveying the attentive circle of faces around him.

“I guess you didn’t tell him,” Norasol said, managing to be in her own inimitable way both gleeful and reproving.

“I fucking did,” Kes said.

Catching up to the conversation, Jess Pava said, “Wait, you hooked up with Cassian Andor? Wow that is so cool!” Poe hadn’t realized her Iberican was good enough to have caught onto that, let alone translated the slang, but apparently it was. He’d have to watch himself.

Kes rubbed at his face wearily. “I did not,” he said, “for the record, take him up on it, and I suppose since the man is not here to defend himself I should say, it wasn’t that he seriously made a pass at me, but there was definite interest.”

“I’d still remember that story,” Poe said.

“Now you have to tell it,” Iolo said. “Gather round, children! It’s time for salacious stories of the old Rebellion!”

“It’s not a salacious story,” Kes said. “Gracious, you infants, the way you’re acting I wouldn’t tell you if it was. Isn’t it past your bedtimes?”

“Tell us, tell us,” Jess begged. Poe noticed that Leia looked extremely amused. It was likely she knew a lot more salacious shit than Kes did, but he wasn’t going to hassle her for it. Not yet. Maybe later.

Attracted by all the fuss, BB-8 rolled in from wherever ey’d been, probably taking holos of people like a creeper which had long been eir favorite partytime activity, and positioned emself next to Kes in order to project a holo of none other than Cassian Andor. It was a candid holo, and Poe couldn’t begin to guess where the little droid had found it-- BB-8 had clearly accessed some kind of comprehensive database, because ey’d been coming out with the strangest things lately at odd times, and this was no exception.

In the holo, Andor was sitting at a table, and the holocorder was on the table so he cut off at elbow height, one of his arms lying on the table in front of him with the fingers tapping. He was looking down, then flicked his eyes up above the holocorder, pressing his lips together in annoyance or resignation; his mouth moved, but there was no audio, and then the holo cut out again. “Subject: Andor, Cassian: Captain, Intelligence,” BB-8 beeped.

“That was him,” Kes said.

“Would do,” Iolo said. “Sign me up.”

BB-8 followed it up by projecting a holo of-- it took Poe a moment to process that this was Kes, as he’d looked over thirty years ago-- his face was softer, rounder, but still angular, and there were bruised-looking hollows under his eyes. Kes was likewise sitting at a table and looking up at someone behind the holocorder. His gaze flickered between two points and he flinched visibly, then the holo cut out.

“Holy shit,” Kes said. “B, where did you get that?”

“Subject, Dameron, Kes: Civilian, retrieved from Imperial custody,” BB-8 recited.

Kes turned to Poe. “What did it say?”

“ _Ey_ , Dad,” Poe said. Kes grimaced, muttering an uneasy apology as he regarded the little droid. “Ey just said your name and that you were retrieved from Imperial custody.”

“That’s from my debrief,” Kes said. “That’s classified stuff. I’ve never even seen that, I just recognize what I was wearing.”

“Where did you get that, Beep?” Poe asked the little droid.

BB rolled a tiny circle in place, a gesture of prevarication. “The database was secured but _technically_ I was _allowed_ to look,” ey said, beeping slower for emphasis. “There was a lot of really interesting stuff in there and I haven’t gone through all of it yet.”

“Hm,” Poe said. “Where was this?”

“Well,” BB-8 said. “I mean. I’ve accessed a couple of databases. I had cleared out a lot of data, as it happens, before we went on this last mission, and so I have a lot of space, and I thought I might find something good. And I’m still running analysis. But there was a lot of stuff about your family, Poe!”

“Hm,” Poe said again, and looked at Leia, who grimaced.

“Our database security might have a weak spot where a certain very charismatic droid is concerned,” she said.

“Show us Cassian Andor again,” Jess said. BB-8 obligingly projected a still holo this time, Andor in good light looking tired and a little grim, possibly resentful of whoever was taking the holo. “Hmm,” Jess said thoughtfully. “If he made a pass at me I don’t know whether I’d turn him down.”

“It wasn’t a serious pass,” Kes said. “But [he’d worked with my father](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10153283) and said I reminded him of my father and I kind of put two and two together there.”

“How do you mean?” Jess asked, frowning.

“I mean, he and my father had absolutely slept together, and I reminded him _favorably_ of my father,” Kes said.

“Oh ew,” Jess said, “no, I wouldn’t, I’d turn him down. That’s creepy.”

“Also I was already married,” Kes said, “and recovering from torture, so it didn’t matter. He wasn’t, like, gross about it, it wasn’t really creepy.”

“Beep,” Poe said, “did your database have anything about a Molo Untar in it?”

“Spell that,” BB-8 said, spinning a little as ey concentrated. Poe obliged.

“Untar, Molo,” BB beeped, and flashed up a holo, of a man Poe wasn’t familiar with. He had Kes’s nose, and resembled him around the eyes, though their jaws were different. And Molo’s face was marked with tattoos-- a sequence of dots on his chin, and a symbol on his cheekbone that looked an awful lot like the symbol under Kes’s collarbone. In the holo, the man was perhaps about thirty, hard-faced, looking into middle distance with an air of preoccupation. “Also known as X47 or Izarri.”

“He _does_ look just like you,” Jess said softly.

“He died in the hands of the Empire,” Kes said. “Andor apologized to me; he hadn’t been able to either save him or kill him before they captured him.”

“When did he leave?” Poe asked.

Kes shook his head slightly, and Norasol leaned in, looking sadly at the holo. “When the Republic fell,” she said, “Kes was about two. We talked it over among ourselves, and decided that two of us should stay to raise Kes, and the other one could go and fight. Molo figured that since Lita was pretty frail, and I knew more about the old ways, he should be the one to go, so he went.”

“I told you this,” Kes said to Poe.

Poe shook his head slightly. “Not so I understood,” he said, frowning. It rang a bell, the bones of it, but he wasn’t sure of the details. Certainly not as acutely as he should have been, given how relevant his grandfather’s choice had been to the decisions he’d faced in his own life.

“In those early days there wasn’t much of a Rebellion,” Norasol said. “And at first, he could come and go and not be much remarked. But the Empire kept good records, and he realized that they’d trace him back to us someday, if they ever assembled enough of a dossier on his activities to track him down. So we had to pretend he’d abandoned us. And we had to truly act as if it were true. No one could know it wasn’t the truth. Family couldn’t know.”

“I couldn’t know,” Kes said. “When I was little, I really thought my dad was a drunk who never came around because he was a deadbeat.” He looked bleak, staring at the holo that apart from the chin and tattoos could have been of him, the more Poe looked at it.

“We never would know who to trust, you see,” Norasol said. “He had to be more or less dead to us. He came by only very occasionally, and we couldn’t let anyone see us speak kindly to him. Kes genuinely disliked him, because he wasn’t allowed to know the truth until he was old enough to keep a secret.”

“They told me when I was ten,” Kes said. “But I still couldn’t tell anybody, so it didn’t help me when the other kids teased me about it.”

Poe was starting to put some things together, now, and he didn’t really want to reach the conclusion that was presenting itself. “You really,” he said, “even in private--”

“Even in private,” Norasol said. “That’s--” She turned to Kes. “I _told_ you he didn’t understand, Kes, and so when he joined the Resistance and you told him he’d have to be dead to us, he didn’t understand that it’s a family tradition.”

Kes was staring at Molo’s holopic, jaw set. “When you were born, Poe, I was on a Rebel base, and I realized I was going to have to do the same thing,” he said. “I realized I’d never get to know you and you’d grow up your whole life thinking I was a deadbeat too.”

“Except that Alderaan got destroyed,” Norasol put in, almost cheerfully, “and I had some kind of presentiment so I made us leave, and we came to you and then there was a war on, so it didn’t happen that way.”

Poe stared at Kes staring at the holo, and made himself ask, “How old were you when Molo died?”

Kes flicked a glance over at Poe. “Fourteen,” he said. “I hadn’t seen him in years though.” He looked back at the holo. “I never knew him. We never really spoke. Not honestly, person to person. There was never a chance.”

Poe stared, letting his eyes blur out a little, matching up the cheekbones of the man with the cheekbones of the holo. He focused on the holo again, just as BB-8 dredged up another one. This was a moving one; the same man, looking straight into the holocorder, mouth moving; he was reciting a message of some kind, but there was no sound. He had a bruised cheekbone and a cut lip, and looked exhausted in the holo.

“And you thought you’d have to have the same relationship with me,” Poe said, managing to look at Kes.

Kes was watching the holo. He didn’t say anything, just nodded.

“So when I joined the Resistance you figured…”

Kes looked at Poe then. “I explained this to you,” he said. “I know I did.”

Poe shook his head. “I didn’t understand it, if you did,” he said. It wasn’t that he hadn’t had a lot of emotionally significant talks with his father, but-- well, there hadn’t been a _whole_ lot of them. Kes’s brand of emotional support tended to be somewhat understated, relying on physical affection and nonverbal stuff, more than stated in-as-many-words anything. And forget getting it in writing; Kes was an indifferent correspondent at best, and not fond of sending holos either. So surely a conversation like that would have made an impression on Poe, unless he’d been too young to understand it, or something. It didn’t make sense.

“I told you,” Norasol said, to Kes, and she wasn’t laughing.

“Xacristo,” Kes muttered. “What, did you think I was disowning you for fun? Did you never think for a moment about what it would mean if the First Order took revenge on your family? Did you learn nothing from our entire family history?”

“Hey now,” Poe said, “it’s not that I never thought about it, but I figured we could at least still care about each other in private.”

“You can’t trust anyone, Poe,” Kes said. He was still watching the holo, which had gone fuzzy-still on the final frame. Molo looked tired and sad, and twenty-fiveish, staring directly out at the viewer from his insubstantial light-drawn self; the cut in his lip had started to bleed, and had left a smudge under his mouth.

“We need-- more drinks,” Iolo said, picking up the pitcher again.

“That’s awful,” Jess said, holding her cup out to Iolo. Kes glanced over at her. “I mean-- to lose your dad, and think you lost your kid, and then really lose your kid-- that’s all I mean. I don’t know if I’d have understood it if it was explained to me either, I’m not blaming Poe, it’s just-- that really sucks, sir.”

“Don’t call me sir,” Kes said, but his expression was soft. “Thanks, though. I appreciate the sympathy.”

 

______

 

The sun didn’t so much set, here, as go into eclipse spectacularly behind the face of the gas giant that took up a big portion of the sky. It was astonishingly glorious, and caught everyone’s attention. Even the people who lived here paused to look at it now and then, admiringly.

Finn hadn’t expected he’d be so moved by it, but he kept having to stop and go back outside to look at it. It caught at him, entranced him, with how beautiful it was. And, more even than that, how beautiful it made everything else. If you looked at it, then made yourself turn around and look the other direction, you’d see the fields stretching out in a glimmering hazy dusk, with the edges of every object limned in a purplish sparkling light, fading softly into the backdrop that was the heavy jungle a little distance away.

Something glittered occasionally in the jungle, and Finn watched it in wonder. He finally had the notion of reaching out with the Force to find out what it was.

“Insects,” Rey said, feeling what he was doing; she’d done the same. “It’s insects.”

“It is,” he said. “Wow.”

“I like this place,” she said.

“So do I,” Finn admitted. The food was amazing, too. He’d overheard much discussion of it; some of the dishes were deeply traditional and complicated ones that Norasol had been teaching several of the other people who lived here to make. How many people actually lived here, he wasn’t sure, but there were a couple of young women who seemed more or less affiliated with the household. It wasn’t anything like he’d expected, not any of it.

Picking up on his thought, maybe, Rey said, “I saw a lot of normal family houses in holopics, and I sort of expected Poe would be from one of those.”

“Yeah,” Finn said. “This isn’t-- what I expected.” He laughed a little. “Kes isn’t what I expected either.”

“I like him,” Rey said, “but, yeah.”

“Oh,” Finn said, “I like him a lot more than I think I’d like someone more-- normal.”

“You have a lot of responsibility now,” Rey said, switching mental tracks.

“I do,” Finn said.

“You’re actually a big deal,” she said.

Finn laughed, at that. “I kind of am,” he said, a little wonderingly.

“That means we won’t get to stay here long and enjoy all this,” she said.

He looked out at the sunset, meditatively. It was really more an eclipse than a sunset. “No,” he said, “probably not. That means we’ll have to enjoy it while it lasts.”

She took his hand, and walked with him a little ways in companionable silence, admiring the sky. As it got darker, they turned and went back toward the bustle of the main complex, where most of the party was. There was music now, and Finn was looking forward to Poe singing, maybe.

Someone was standing near the tree at the edge of the garden, a small lone figure, and it had to be Leia; she was such an overwhelming presence in the Force that it warmed Finn from the inside out. But as he drew nearer, he could feel that it wasn’t all her; there was something else, something soft and subtle but strong.

“The tree,” Rey said. “The tree’s alive.”

“Trees _are_ alive,” Finn pointed out.

“No, it’s,” she said, and gestured at it.

Leia turned and smiled at them. “This is a special tree,” she said. “My brother gave it to Shara Bey, Poe’s mother, and she brought it here. Isn’t it amazing?”

“It is,” Finn said, gazing up at it. It was a lovely tree, with many branches and softly blue-green leaves. It was lit from inside, but it wasn’t exactly a visible light. It was palpable, and seemed to pulsate with vitality; not like a heartbeat, but somehow similar.

“It’s a descendant of some special tree, I guess,” Leia said, “from the first Jedi temple on Coruscant. Luke went there, it was a whole thing he did, with Shara. They got two little trees out of it, and he took one, and this is the other.” She laughed. “Shara told him she wasn’t good at plants but she knew someone who was, and she took it home and gave it to Kes and he planted it here. It seems to have thrived pretty well.”

“It’s so beautiful,” Rey whispered. She let go of Finn’s hand, and went and put her hands against the trunk of the tree.

Finn stood where he was, soaking it in, looking up into it. After a moment, though, he turned his head and looked at Leia. She was gazing up into the tree, but she looked sad.

“What if the First Order comes here?” Finn asked her, quietly.

“I was thinking,” she said, “maybe we should take a cutting. But I’m going to ask Kes first, of course.”

Finn looked back at the tree. “What’s a cutting?” he asked.

“Oh,” Leia said, “when you want to-- some kinds of plants, anyway, if you want to make another plant, you can cut off a piece of the full-grown one, and if you treat it correctly, it will sprout its own roots, and you can plant it and have another tree.”

“Oh,” Finn said. He didn’t know a lot about how plants worked, or animals. Someone had said something about eating animals and he’d had the uncomfortable realization that everyone besides him already knew that a lot of the protein that was in rations had been grown as the bodies of animals, and it was something he was probably going to learn a lot more about and it was a struggle not to let on that this was horrifying to him. In retrospect, it made sense, but he hadn’t been ready to learn it.

(He wondered if Bolt and Teeny and the others knew already, or if they’d be just as shocked.)

“I’d like to hedge our bets,” Leia said, “but I’m also figuring I’d do just about anything to keep the First Order away from here.”

Finn looked at where Rey was standing with her arms around the trunk of the tree. “So would I,” he said.

 

_______

 

The whole planet was in upheaval, Kes knew, despite the current festival atmosphere, as the Resistance landed cargo and set up shop. He was turning over the entire yard by the crop-processing barn into a forest of temporary shelters, the barn itself becoming a quartermaster’s supply depot. He was going to have a hell of a time keeping them out of the fields, but they’d compact the soil to hell if he wasn’t an asshole about it from day 1. He’d already driven in some fenceposts with signs, but he knew more drastic measures would have to be taken. Maybe in the morning he could bully Poe out of bed, like old times.

It wasn’t like he really believed it would matter. If the First Order destroyed the planet, it wouldn’t matter if the soil was compacted. But he had to care; it was sheer survival at this point. You just had to keep believing there’d be a tomorrow, because otherwise it would paralyze you.

He was hiding, a little, and he admitted it to himself. It wasn’t that it was so many people in his space-- he’d never really treated this place as a private kind of space at all. Shara had really loved having space of her own, a door she could close, a balcony with a view of nothing but landscape, but he’d grown up never alone and had ached to recreate that sense of bustle. So this ranch had always been occupied, he’d always had at least seasonal help, a guest visiting, an orphan or two, the apprentices who came by almost every day; there were always voices somewhere in the distance, even if sometimes it was just Norasol talking to herself. Someone was always around.

But he didn’t usually talk about himself, didn’t usually bring up ancient family hurts, or the deep personal scars he’d sustained as the scrawny little cousin with the deadbeat dad. No, nobody’d ever really been mean to his face, but he’d always overheard it. He was good at overhearing gossip.

Partly because he’d always been good at this-- hiding in a crowded space. He was leaning comfortably against the garden wall near the gate, in a shadow now that the sun had set, listening to a couple of Etto’s adoptive grand-nieces singing a duet while a kid he didn’t know with a rival-clan Fronteras sigil on his cheekbone accompanied them on a guitar. It was beautiful, and it was a good soundtrack to all the things in his head.

Norasol had, of course, been right that Poe hadn’t understood the context of his decision to join the Resistance, but what was really bothering Kes was that he absolutely knew that he’d explained it all. If he looked at a calendar and matched it up to Poe’s visits home from the Academy he could probably assign an actual date to it. It was going to drive him crazy, and he was mad about it, but it was hard to really have enough emotion to spare to be mad about it.

Poe hadn’t been lying, was the thing; he’d genuinely been astonished at the revelations, and had clearly never seen any of it that way before. So, Kes supposed, either he was crazy, and was remembering something that never happened, or Poe was crazy, maybe brain-damaged, and didn’t remember an entire important conversation.

Well. Poe _was_ brain-damaged, or had been. He was kind of a miracle. It didn’t bear considering. But the misunderstanding had been long before the damage had occurred, so. It was a mystery and a puzzle and a miracle, and Kes was a little drunk and wasn’t really going to manage to work his way through any of that tonight.

The girls finished their duet, and Kes noticed that in a shadow similar to his, on the opposite side of the gate, there were two people, sitting very close together. He couldn’t really see them-- his night vision had gone from being freakishly good, for a human, to just scarily good, as he aged-- but he could infer from their positions and the lowness of their voices that they were having a low-key sort of discussion that might be the opening salvos of a romantic tryst.

He weighed his options; leave them to it, or sneak up on them, scare them shitless, and offer them a room? He tilted his head, trying to make out whether either of them were someone he knew. Both sounded male, but he couldn’t make out either voice. They were murmuring.

Leave them to it, Kes supposed, and just then someone touched his arm and he flinched violently, whipping around to confront the interloper. He was tipsy and startled enough that his reflexes took him all the way to pulling out the boxcutter he always kept in his left side pocket, holding it in his fist hidden under his wrist as he shoved out with his other hand to fend off attack.

“Yow,” Poe said, jumping backward with an agility that suggested a lot more hand-to-hand combat experience than Kes had figured a pilot would have, “sorry, Dad, I thought you heard me!”

Kes stared at him in frozen silence for a moment, then shoved the boxcutter back into his pocket with a slightly shaky hand. It was a long time since he’d reacted like that to someone innocently sneaking up on him, but then, he’d just gone back into battle, so maybe he’d be keeping the rekindled reflexes for a while.

Oh, maybe now that he was home he’d get the nightmares back too, that’d be a treat.

“Xacristo,” he said, deflating, and got back down into his crouch. “No, I was trying to figure out who’s fucking in the shadows over there.”

Poe snickered, recovering admirably from having his father draw a weapon on him-- maybe he hadn’t noticed the boxcutter-- and hunkered down next to Kes comfortably. “It’s Arana and Bolt,” he said, “and they’re not fucking, but they’re on their way to it. I was figuring on going and telling them to get a room, in a minute, but I wanted to giggle about it with you first.”

“Oh, don’t giggle at them,” Kes said. “Let them have this. Poor Arana-- you know he was so broken up over you, Poe.”

“I know,” Poe said quietly, more solemn. “He’s a good friend.”

“And Bolt’s Norasol’s nephew of some stripe,” Kes said, “so now I have to adopt him.”

“A terrible fate,” Poe said, a laugh rippling through his voice. “You have like, a hundred adopted kids.”

“I do,” Kes admitted. “Not the same way, though. Not like--” And he was drunk enough not to think twice about saying it again. “Not to replace you, Poe. You know that, right?”

Poe didn’t answer, but in the soft light-- about a quarter of the gas giant was visible at this angle, so it was a velvet-dark but not completely pitch-black night-- Kes could see the glitter as his eyes moved, considering that.

“I’ve been pretty shamelessly trying to rebuild my lost people,” Kes said, “but not replace you, that wasn’t what that was about.”

“Oh,” Poe said, “I got that. I do. I mean, you started collecting orphans even before I left.” Yavin IV had been a prime resettlement spot for a lot of people, and the Harbor Council had always been more or less supportive of the variety of youth-focused programs Kes had always run, first out of the one building that had been intended to be a barn at the edge of the property, and then out of the community center in the settlement once they’d had one. (That barn had never really wound up a barn, it was the one the quartermaster was using now.)

“I did,” Kes said. “I mean. I don’t collect them. I just. Make sure they get educations and can find jobs. And know how to act.” And get to belong somewhere, which was something Kes had perhaps never quite done for his own son. He’d never been good at talking, though, and the nonverbal stuff had worked out just fine for most of the orphans and such. He leaned his shoulder against Poe’s. “But I never gave away your bedroom. I always hoped there’d-- be a time you could come back. For whatever that’s worth.”

“Bolt can have Norasol’s spare room,” Poe said. “You don’t have to give away mine now either.”

Kes managed a laugh. “I don’t,” he said. “I-- speaking of which, how many beds do I need to put into your room? Or like, one big bed?”

Poe shoved his shoulder against Kes’s, but relented, apparently not really annoyed. “It’s fine, Papa, we’ll figure it out.”

“Don’t let go of Finn,” Kes said. “He’s brave as fuck and sharp too. I like him.”

“I won’t, Papa,” Poe said, laughing. “I’ll keep him as long as he lets me.”

“Good,” Kes said. He sighed, and settled himself more comfortably against the fence. “It’s driving me crazy, I know I told you about Molo and all that on one of your breaks from school. We sat out here-- just over there,” and he pointed across the garden-- “we had a couple of drinks, it had to be like, your fourth or fifth year. I swear I’m not hallucinating this.”

“Oh,” Poe said, and it had the resigned air of unpleasant revelation. “I know what happened.”

“What?” Kes asked. “Please, tell me, it’s driving me insane.”

“Was it my fifth year,” Poe said, “and I flew myself home, for the first time?”

Kes pondered that. “Possibly,” he said. He did remember that Poe had flown himself home for a visit and had been so incredibly proud of himself, and it had been difficult to show the proper enthusiasm because of how broken-up Kes had still felt inside about Shara always flying away from him until she never came back, and he’d known that was unfair to take out on Poe, but it had still made him-- oh yeah, it had definitely been that time. “Yes. Yes, it was, I drank too much and made you drink so I wouldn’t drink alone, so that my jaw would loosen enough for me to tell you what I had to tell you.”

“Yeahhhh,” Poe said. “That was-- I don’t remember a lot about it but I remember that being my big object lesson in not combining alcohol with the flight stimulants they make you take for multi-day hyperlane jags.”

Kes frowned at him. “You were fine,” he said.

“I’m sure I looked fine,” Poe said. “But I blacked out about half of that visit. I figure I’m missing two days or so.”

Kes blinked. “Shit,” he said softly.

“Yeah,” Poe said. “I mean, it was good to learn it then, in a safe place, but I’ve never done it again.”

“Well,” Kes said. “Shit,” he finally repeated. Shara had been prickly about booze too, at particular times, and he’d never really understood why but he’d never pushed her on it. He’d mostly never pushed her on anything, he’d never needed to. Never felt like he could, either. But they’d never been a hard-drinking family, and Kes himself rarely touched the stuff. Only when his jaw locked up and he couldn’t talk, and even then only when it really mattered and he was too tired to fight through it the hard way.

Poe sighed. “Yeah, I wish I remembered that conversation, then. I bet it was good.”

“It was,” Kes said, subdued. He couldn’t remember if Poe had seemed strange to him, at all, but it was useless to speculate; he himself had been so emotional about all of it, he likely wouldn’t have noticed if Poe had been bright blue, let alone a little bit disoriented. He sat a moment, absorbing that, then said quietly, disgustedly, “Well, _fuck_ . That means you were completely justified in thinking I’d-- what, did you think I just disagreed with your politics? I’d never speak to you again because I thought-- _stars_ , child,” and he ran out of words.

“I mean,” Poe said. “I have been-- it was hard to understand, a little bit, but more like-- Papa, it’s so hard to get you to talk about yourself, I’m sorry to have missed out on it.”

“I talk about myself,” Kes said, wounded, but he knew Poe was right. He sighed, and slumped down lower. “I try to,” he amended. “Listen, I--”

“I know,” Poe said. “Mama explained it to me. That’s how long I’ve known about you and talking.”

Kes blinked at him. They were sitting, by now, both of them sunk down to sit flat in the grass against the wall, and Poe was leaned all along Kes’s arm and shoulder. “What did she explain, exactly?” Kes asked, suspicious.

“She told me that during the war you got hurt so much in your soul that you forgot how to talk for months at a time,” Poe said. “And that ever since, sometimes you just couldn’t make words come out even when you wanted to. So I shouldn’t ever think it was my fault, or that I’d done something wrong, if you didn’t seem to be able to talk to me about things.”

“That’s,” Kes said, but paused. “It wasn’t _months_ at a time,” he said, and tried to imagine why on earth his wife had felt she needed to explain his trauma problems to their at the time quite young son. He could really only think of one possibility. “Did I-- when did I upset you by not talking?”

“You never did,” Poe said. “Not when I was that little. But kids notice stuff, Papa. I noticed you sometimes just-- didn’t talk.”

Kes shook his head slightly. “I worked really hard not to-- be weird about it,” he said. He’d been pretty good, he’d thought, while Shara was alive. “I mean. After she-- when she was gone it was a lot harder.”

“But I already knew,” Poe said, “so it wasn’t so bad as it would’ve been if I didn’t.” He nudged Kes with his shoulder. “I already knew those hand signs.”

“That’s why you made me teach you hand signs,” Kes said. “I thought you just-- I thought it was a game.”

“It was Mom’s idea,” Poe said. “I was worried.”

“You worried a lot,” Kes said. Poe’s ever-sunshiney nature had always been a front, even from early childhood. It wasn’t that the sunshine wasn’t sincere, but it was underlaid with a lot of earnest concern. “I never wanted you to worry.”

“It’s who I am,” Poe said. “It’s not something you did. Anyway I feel like I turned out okay.”

“You did,” Kes allowed.

“Thank you,” Poe said. “Should we go get another drink?”

“Let’s,” Kes said, exhaling gustily.


End file.
